Thursday, May 23, 2013

Groundhog Week

At the risk of sounding like a broken record our main activities over the last couple of days have been body clipping and teeth floating. Yes, I realize that sounds like we are making our very own version of the movie Groundhog Day, except we shall call ours Groundhog Week. What did Jason and Melissa do this week? Body clip horses and get a bunch of teeth floated. What did we do last week? Body clip horses and get a bunch of teeth floated. Groundhog Week.

Lily is now clipped. Lily and I have come to an agreement on certain things over the last few years, namely bathing and body clipping. Lily hates having a bath. She especially hates the pre-clip bath that consists of fully lathering her up in soap not once but twice. Having two baths back to back on the same day would be something that would feature in Lily's worst dreams. However we have reached a tenuous pact with each other that I work as fast I can and she keeps the body slamming of Melissa to a bare minimum.

Lily used to require heavy sedation in order to clip her. Now she is mostly good about clipping and needs no sedation at all. I always have some on hand just in case, but haven't needed it for her last three clips. She does tend to do some moving around but nothing major, mostly she stands quietly. Lily is a smart horse and I think she realizes that she feels a lot better after being clipped each year. Even better this year, Lily's clip job was not our typical, epic, two sets of blades clip job that takes several hours to complete. The weather stayed cooler this spring so I didn't have to rush to clip her to keep her from frying under her huge coat, so she had done a lot more shedding prior to clipping this year. It was a nice change for both us. As always I forget how pretty her head and neck are until the hair comes off.

In other news a bunch more horses had their teeth floated this week. All of the horses living on the back half of the farm get their teeth floated in the spring. Between last week and this week they now all have teeth floating checked off their list of things to do in 2013. Jason and I are thrilled to have that huge job done for another year. Now you don't have to listen to us complain about teeth floating again until the fall when we do the front half of the farm.

I think I only have one more body clip to go now. Then it will be back to sorting blankets!

Lily plotting her revenge after her bath

making progress

Done! With hair from one end of the barn to the other but who cares, Lily looks happy.

Rocky's mom will understand the significance of this picture. Rocky has both a hand AND a float in his mouth and he isn't trying to kill everyone within a 10 foot radius. Major progress!!

Apollo, Hemi and Thomas

Grand with his ears at half mast, Elfin grazing

Sam, Sebastian and Murphy

there is some serious pony attitude being portrayed in this picture of Norman and Cuffie; these two are the perfect couple

Stormy looking very alert about something, but Bergie didn't notice

Largo and Tiny definitely saw whatever Stormy was looking at

They were looking at this. We had another day with a bulldozer and cleared a path through some heavy woods in their pasture. Their pasture renovations now give them a nice view of the front of the farm.